Arts
They’ll be saying “I do, I do,I do,…” right here
Mamma Mia! ends with a wedding bait and switch when young lovers Sophie and Sky admit that they are not ready for marriage and instead opt to travel around the world.
Falling in love with Sri Lanka: Phillip Ryan and Lucy May Barker. Pix by Sameera Weerasekera
But that is not the case for Lucy May Barker (26) and Phillip Ryan (28), the young actors who play Sophie and Sky in the Mamma Mia! musical. They have done their fair share of travelling and are now ready to walk down the aisle, for real this time.
The couple have been together for three years and plan to tie the knot right here in Sri Lanka. The date could be sometime between April and June, they reveal. Talking to the Sunday Times last weekend after a week spent travelling around Sri Lanka following Mamma Mia’s successful 10-day run in Colombo, the two admit they really didn’t expect to find love on the job. They were more focused on making sure that they remembered their lines and choreography because they were filling someone else’s shoes. But as soon as they were more comfortable on stage, the chemistry that was so obvious on-stage never left.
Before their starring roles in Mamma Mia! which has taken them all over the world, the couple worked hard on their respective careers back home. Philip played the role of Sick Boy in Trainspotting Live at Edinburgh Fringe while Lucy’s notable roles include Ilse in the original London cast of the four-time Olivier Award-winning Spring Awakening in 2009, the titular role in Annie in the 2001-2003 tours, Johanna in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street alongside Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, which transferred to London’s West End in 2012, as well as many others on stage and screen.
However it was not love at first sight for the two when they first met at auditions back in 2015, Lucy laughs, recounting her first impressions of Phillip. “Phil had his hair all bleached because of another job and I remember thinking ‘this boy has not got the best hair do’”.
Lucy believed they would tie the knot after their international tour had ended. Phillip had another agenda. By December 2017 he had the ring he designed, made and hidden in the attic of their stage manager’s house because he knew it would have burnt a hole through his pocket with the couple being around each other 24/7.
A scene from the musical: Sophie and Sky
Fast-forward to early July 2018: they are sitting on the Margate beach in front of their new home in the seaside town in Kent when Phillip gives Lucy a book. “The book was this lovely collection of all the things we’ve been doing the last three years and it was just this gorgeous book with all these stick figures and then on the final page it said ‘Will you marry me?’” Lucy tells us. Phillip did forget to get down on his knee, but Lucy said ‘yes’.
“I remember walking down the aisle for the show right after we got engaged and in the back of my mind is just going this is going to be me soon.”
The gorgeous engagement ring that Sophie has on her finger during the show is Lucy’s real ring.
They did not expect to have a destination wedding in exotic Sri Lanka, it hadn’t even crossed their minds what with being on Mamma Mia’s international tour for the past year. The couple certainly did not expect the spontaneous change of plans -they simply fell in love with Sri Lanka and its people.
“Being in this country, spending time here, we’ve been travelling down south and it’s such a beautiful country, the people are so nice. It’s just stunning. And I was just like I want to get married here,” Phillip says.
“The beauty on your doorstep is so amazing, of course it’s going to make people proud of where they come from. They are proud to share the island with us. To be able to share something as intimate as getting married in a place so beautiful is something to be proud of.”
When Lucy came down last year for the Mamma Mia! Musical launch she met Dominic and Azra, the couple who had won the Cinnamon Island Weddings competition for 2018 and she remembered thinking ‘that would be a dream day to get married somewhere so beautiful with our friends and family like Dominic and Azra’.
CEO of Cinnamon Life Mall, Vice President of John Keells Holdings Dileep Mudadeniya heard whispers of this dream and Cinnamon Island Weddings decided to make the couple’s dream come true.
“It’s been so nice to feel that our wedding is going to be something so cared for in a way that we didn’t ever imagine that it would,” Lucy says.
Cinnamon Island Weddings will be sponsoring all the costs of the wedding. Lucy and Phillip enjoy the ease and support they have working with Cinnamon, who have solid experience in planning destination weddings. ‘We have control over what we want and Cinnamon helps us focus on our marriage as well incorporating Sri Lanka into the wedding.’
Cinnamon Island Weddings plan to bring in various local artisans to make the perfect destination wedding for the couple with several picturesque venues available and flawless hospitality services.
“We would love to get married here, and certainly one of the things that is most important to us is to have a ceremony that represents Sri Lanka, the beautiful country and the beautiful people and to have a day that is a day for us,” Lucy says.
It’s a dream scene – one worthy of Mamma Mia! indeed to look forward to.